Interview: Alan Mark Berg, Author of Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide

Alan Mark Berg is the author of Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide which is a comprehensive and pragmatic guide to using, managing, and maintaining Sakai in the real world.

Alan who has a BSc. MSc. PGCE, has been a lead developer at the Central Computer Services at the Universiteit van Amsterdam for the last eleven years. In his famously scarce spare time, he writes computer articles http://home.uva.nl/a.m.berg. He has a degree, two masters, and a teaching qualification. In previous incarnations, he was a technical writer, an Internet/Linux course writer, a product line development officer, and a teacher. He likes to get his hands dirty with the building and gluing of systems. He remains agile by playing computer games with his kids who sadly consistently beat him physically, mentally, and morally.

Packt: How did you find the overall experience of writing your book for Packt?
Alan: Writing with Packt was fast and efficient. The deadlines were clear and we all kept to the agreed milestones. I did not write the Sakai Courseware Management: The Official Guide alone. It was a collective under taking involving 40 members from the community. Michael Korcuska was co-author with notable contributions from Josh Baron, Leon Raijmann, and Margaret Wagner the main technical reader.

Packt: During the writing process, did you come across any issues/ difficulties that affected your writing and how did you overcome these?
Alan: There were no real difficulties during the production process. A very minor hiccup, a couple of pictures were rejected due to their low quality. If you are creating a lot of screen shots it is important to consistently capture images with the same dimensions and dpi.

Packt: Whilst writing your book, did you find that it overshadowed personal life in any way? How did you deal with this?
Alan: I made the decision to write the book with prior consent of my wife. We both knew that the work load was going to be temporarily tough, and yes, as predicted,occasionally my personal life was disrupted. To keep myself to plan and limit impact I wrote a specific number of words per day and kept to the routine no matter what.

Packt: Was there anything interesting that happened during the writing of the book?
Alan: I noticed as the project moved forward that I slowly got tired of writing and found it harder to reach the target number of words per day. Luckily, the project finished before this became an issue.

Packt: How did our Acquisition Editors help you - what kind of things did they help you with and how did they support you throughout the writing process?
Alan: I was happy about the support given by PACKT and I am not just saying this because these words are going onto the Packt' website. James Lumsden, the
acquisition editor was prompt in helping while structuring the proposal and giving feedback at important moments during the writing of the book. Prompt feedback builds trust and radiates professionalism.

Packt: Our authors usually have full-time jobs whilst writing for us. Was this the case for you and how did you approach managing your time?
Alan: I am the senior developer at the Central Computer Services at the University of Amsterdam. I floated the idea of helping writing a book on Sakai. This served the purposes of the University and also the wider Sakai community. They sponsored my efforts by allowing me to work on the book 2 days a week in University time. In return I added
an extra day per week of my free time to the project and of course it turned out to cost more of my own time than expected.

The Sakai book is large at around 500 pages. It involved the active help of about 40 community members with whom I coordinated. I was the main author and the project leader
for the Sakai community side. The communication itself seeped into my weekends, the writing stayed mostly contained within the week or evenings in the weekend.

A significant number of chapters were written by Michael Korcuska . I believe Michael worked in his spare time.

If you write a smaller more targeted book, say of 250-300 pages, you can potentially write the book in your own time.

Packt: What benefits did writing a book bring to your specialist area?
Alan:I have learnt a lot, especially about book writing and some of the inner details of Sakai

Packt: Do you have any tips for other authors, or tricks that you learnt whilst writing, that you'd like to share?
Alan: Writing a book successfully and on-time requires writing consistently, support from your family and a good partnership with the staff of the publisher. Without all these factors the book will not be easily born.

If you want to be certain of reaching your own goals, invest the required time in creating a thoroughly researched and detailed proposal.

Packt: Do you have any advice for other authors who may be interested in writing for Packt, but are still unsure?
Alan: Send in a proposal and see if you mesh with the acquisition editor.

Packt: What projects, if any, are you working on at the moment?
Alan: I am busy being a fulltime senior developer focusing on improving quality assurance processes within the Central Computer Services and helping to deliver on line learning services. Any spare time I have is reserved for writing magazine articles or consultancy gigs. After finishing the book I now have time to do so.

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